More Than Meets The Eye

Here’s a tale about the BBC and its conjoined twin The Guardian being taken in by the same bit of Pali propaganda.It seems Jacoub Odeh has been entertaining the gullible siblings.

“The fact that one Yacoub Odeh is the former Lifta resident guiding the BBC’s Wyre Davies and the Guardian’s Harriet Sherwood separately would suggest that this “tour” was a well-organized effort offered to the international media and eagerly picked up by those outlets sympathetic to the Palestinian narrative from 1948.”

The vindictive Israelis want to pave paradise and put up a parking lot on his former home. The remains of the Palestinian village of Lifta are the subject of a legal planning battle. To conserve or build? The BBC article portrays this as an example of Israel’s desire to obliterate precious Palestinian memories by their deliberately ruthless policy of expansionism.The BBC reconfigures the 1948 war of intended annihilation of Israel by the Arabs, by using this peculiar phrase:

“It(Lifta’s) 3,000 residents were forced out or fled in fighting that erupted before the creation of Israel in 1948, which Palestinians view as the “nakba” or catastrophe. They were not allowed to move back.”

Fighting just “erupts,” you know, spontaneously, for no apparent reason. The emotive language leaves no-one in doubt about which side the BBC is on. Harriet Sherwood in the Guardian goes further, but then, they have no obligation to be impartial, although one would expect them to make an effort to be accurate.

“As for the other question – well it is pretty clear that there are plenty of people intent upon making political capital out of places such as Lifta.It is surely telling that their concern does not appear to extend equally to other sites such as the Jewish quarter in Hevron or the ancient 8th century synagogue in Gaza, let alone the Jewish burial ground in Tripoli which is now covered in concrete.”(Israelinurse)

19 Responses to More Than Meets The Eye

Given the imbalance in the article between the overwhelming number of paragraphs given over to those advancing a (purely Palestinian) hostile take on the planned development and the mere handful of paragraphs (the last two laden with loaded language of fear and feeling) given over to the pro-development side, I don’t think anyone could consider Yolande Knell’s article fair (despite the balance between the block quotes on the right-hand side of the article).

The comments on the Oy Va Goy thread reveal a (very plausible) take on the reasons for the abandonment of Lifta no one reading the BBC article would ever suspect.

My suspicions are always aroused when I read phrases like “his idyllic boyhood in Lifta”.

Thanks for another impressive post, Sue.
The Al Beeb vultures are circling as never before, it seems. That nuggety little chap, Wyre Davies, used to be Al Beeb’s Wales Correspondent, and then – hey presto! – he was transported from talking about eisteddfods to talking about Jerusalem.
I feared the little man might be out of his depth, and prone to tutelage …

Keffiyahs and hummus at the Press Club then as these two saps do the usual debrief.

Wonder who paid for it?-and why bother if these liberal clowns have already set their minds to what they`ll be writing anyway!

The Jews were there thousands of years before Muhammads tribe made a claim on it.

I can travel anywhere in Israel,but the Muslims won`t let me go to Mecca or Medina-and I can`t imagine I`d be too welcome in much of that area-unless I was a Guardian/BBC journo.

All that space there for the Muslims-a thin sliver of land for the only nation that had to be created specifically to stop the Jews getting slaughtered-abnd apparently it`s still too much.
Hopefully this “Arab Spring” will spread the targetted anti-semitism aimed at Israel a little wider for a while…but the liberal elite will do all they can to keep the poor Palestinians in focus-as if there is no room in the area otherwise.

If only the Saudis would stop bankrolling mosques and terror groups here in Europe and built something to welcome the umma currently in camps…but the bleeding stump policy of theirs would mean that their own people would riot!
Presumably-like Blunkett bobbies-the Guardian won`t let Harriet travel without a male chaperone, hence the sharing of expenses!

Bet there was no discussion about renewables or carbon emissions round their hosts!

Well put, cj.
Sums up the hypocrisy and double standards of the Arabs and their fellow-travellers, including the BBC. These third-rate low-lifers deserve each other.
If only they would all go away, preferably to another planet where there are no Jews , and leave the rest of us alone.

Why not OPEC in charge of FIFA…bring the integrity back into the game!
I for one-having seen my team humbled on Sat-will now be following Avram Grant….my way of showing solidarity with the Israeli cause for next season.
Wonder if Mark Regev could get a team-that would change the view of Israel-reckon they would play as a team, would stick to the rules and beat any team of scatterbrains that was constantly moaning about the half-time oranges on offer!

Yes, “violence erupts.” That’s a real BBC favourite. They use it a lot, for example, to protect Muslims who slaughter Copts in Egypt. I remember commenting years ago on this site on that particular copout.

In another news, one Greg Philo spouted a really vile conspiracy theory in the Guardian this morning about the evil Je… er.. Israelis who, he claims, are putting pressure on BBC journalists to toe the Israeli line. How does he know this? Because BBC hacks are writing to him about it. It’s been a while since I’ve heard lies that blatant.

Anyway, CIF closed the debate after about 9 hours and under 500 comments. I’m wondering what CIF Watch will make of it, if they’ve caught it:

Or looking at the list, a number of those posts were stories about the BBC, as reported on MediaGuardian, which tends to cover more media stories than other newspapers.

The summary also doesn’t take into account the 186 links that go via the news headline service Moreover, which redirects to numerous news sources including UK newspapers’ websites, so I’d take it with a pinch of salt.

I take your point. It was a very crude snapshot. However, this web site, Biased BBC, writes a lot more about the BBC than the Guardian does. Where are link-backs to B-BBC? Also, if Moreover is at fault, how did the BBC manage to find a news direct service that favours one particular web site?

Well, IMHO, I think there’s a quality threshold for sure – Biased BBC has demonstrated quesitonable attitudes towards factual accuracy in the past. Besides, the BBC rarely, if ever, links to blogs from its news pages.

And I didn’t say Moreover was “at fault” – more that of the outgoing links, the summary produced above didn’t account for traffic that went via Moreover’s site. The crude script that generated that list doesn’t follow any redirects, so it’s not possible to say which sites benefit from those 186 links that go via Moreover. That’s all.

Just seen a good article from Ron Proser-outgoing Israeli ambassador to the UK-in the Daily Telegraph today.
Thought I`d place it here with you Sue, given your articulation of much of this.
How come the Israeli education system produces witty,weighty people who can write like this…as opposed to our craven moral pigmies like Toynbee and Meyer?
If the likes of Regev and Sacks can explain a good cause so well-how come we only get the Alibhian Browns and Williams?
The Jewish nation are at least still able to educate-so will need no lessons from Riyadh Poly as phoned into the BBC and MSM.